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Preview: Gamble: Turner prize

Adrian Turpin
Saturday 29 November 1997 00:02 GMT
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It's Turner Prize time, and if that doesn't mean a trip to the Tate Gallery, it means a trip to the bookies. There may not be anything like a dead cert in the turf accountants' world, but according to Graham Sharpe of bookmakers William Hill, "the Turner Prize has a good record of favourites winning. More often than not, they've obliged over the years."

Leading the field, not surprisingly, is Goldsmith's graduate Gillian Wearing (2-1), whose video work includes "60 minutes silence", in which a group of police officers spend an hour trying to stay very, very still for the camera. Cornelia Parker (whose Embryo Firearms is featured right), and Christine Borland are joint second at 9-4. Parker's show-stopper is the burnt out remnant of a Kentucky church destroyed by lightning then hung on wires, while Borland's subject is the sometimes freakish human body: moulds of heads from a 1930s Germany medical collection and images inspired by the tale of a real life giant and dwarf. Bringing up the rear, at 9- 2, is Angela Bulloch whose brightly coloured bean bags and flashing lights do for Britart what Fischer Price did for pre-school toys.

The Eye's money is on Parker, but with this warning: to make the equivalent of the pounds 20,000 prize money, readers will have to stake the small matter of pounds 8,888.

Odds correct at time of going to press. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 2 Dec. The Turner Prize Live is on Channel 4, from 9pm. The Turner Prize exhibition is at the Tate Gallery, London SW1 to 18 Jan

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